Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 15, 1995 TAG: 9505160026
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HEMET, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
More than 10,000 years ago, the Domenigoni Valley was a lush watercourse where warm-blooded creatures came to drink, hunt and roam.
Now, it's just an arid basin.
But on Wednesday, engineers plan to set off a series of explosions, beginning construction of Southern California's biggest reservoir and opening a bonanza for scientists.
Preliminary cuts at the 4,500-acre lake site promise a treasure of fossils, said paleontologist Eric Scott.
``This is better than `Jurassic Park,''' Scott said. ```Jurassic Park' is a movie. This is real life - or real death.''
Scientists just scratching the surface already have cataloged bones of extinct giant sloths, mastodons, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, bison, camels and wolves in the valley 75 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Eventually, 12 million cubic yards of earth will be excavated, down to a depth of 60 feet.
Last week, Scott was ecstatic over the most recent discovery, a hip bone from an American lion, a slightly bigger relative of the modern African lion.
``We've found this incredible amount of material, and it's just going to get better and better,'' said Kathleen Springer, a colleague of Scott's at the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands.
Scott, who began his career as a teen-age volunteer cleaning bones at the La Brea tar pits, believes the finds here will rival that Los Angeles collection.
Two dams, one 2 miles long and one 1.7 miles long, will close the Domenigoni Valley and adjoining Diamond Valley. The reservoir will hold 269 billion gallons of water brought from northern California and the Colorado River.
Environmental groups raised no major opposition, but some people were still unhappy with the project. The lake will cover several ancient Indian sites, said Alvino Siva of the Mountain Cahuilla band.
``The only time the Indians have a little clout is if the project is on government land,'' Siva said. ``On private land like the Domenigoni Valley, we don't have a thing to say.''
``I must admit that certain sites will indeed be destroyed,'' said Majors. But hundreds of thousands of Indian artifacts have already been recovered, he said.
The reservoir for the region's Metropolitan Water District will nearly double Southern California's surface storage when it's finished in 1999 at a cost of $1.8 billion.
by CNB